No need for any other types if nuclear steam is done right.
Blatantly false, as all nuclear ships need some sort of fossil fuel generator in case the reactor SCRAMs.
Are there any potential combination and option that are being developed or theorized?
I’ve been playing around with the IEP CONAG idea.
The MAMJDF AoA examined 2 nuclear powerplants for CG(X), an A1B from the Ford, or 2 S6Gs from the Seawolf. Let’s look at how those compare to our speculative power requirements.
Let’s use a Burke Flight III as our base. That means we need to be able to sustain 30+ knots, generate 9MW of ship service power (probably more), and let’s do a 7.5% growth margin.
To fit 14-foot SPY-6s, FXR, SEWIP Block III, 96 Mk41 cells, and flag facilities, we’re going to need a big hull. Zumwalt can fit all that comfortably, but nuclear reactors are big and heavy, so we need something even larger. Let’s call it a ~19000 ton hull, at 700 feet long. That’s nearly identical to the Strike Cruiser (CSGN).
The CSGN was powered by two D2G reactors, producing 45MW of power. Relative to other ships of that size (Hyuga at 75MW, Zumwalt as 68MW, and CGBL at 88MW), ~40% less propulsion power. Why? Nuclear-powered ships optimize their hullform for maximum speed, which reduces their Block Coefficient compared to conventionally-powered ships, giving them less total resistance.
But let’s be conservative and say we a slightly thicccer hull for extra volume and weight margin, so 55MW of power for propulsion.
Our total power requirement can be modeled via the following equation:
7.5% * (Total Propulsion Power + Total Service Power)
1.075 * (55MW + 12MW)
1.075 * (77MW)
83MW
So 77MW of total power requirements and an extra 6MW of SLA.
Now let’s look at our two reactor options, an A1B or two S6Gs.
An A1B produces well over 200MW, maybe even 300MW of power. That is 3-4 times our power requirement. Additionally, only having one massive reactor reduces redundancy and survivability.
Meanwhile an S6G only produces 34MW of power, so 2 of them give 68MW. We get the added redundancy, but are still 15MW short. We can make that up with AG9160s, but that’s a very suboptimal solution, as we still need to burn fossil fuels to meet our total power needs.
Neither of these options are good. One isn’t survivable, the other has all the negatives of a nuclear ship with none of the benefits.
The optimal solution would be something that produces ~40-45MW of electrical power, and is already in series production. S1B fits that bill.
If we use the use two S1Bs with a 40MW electrical output, that’s 80MW. That’s almost enough to meet our power demands, and the rest can be fulfilled with AG9160s. Which we would need anyways, in case the reactors go down.
IEP is just the icing on the cake. It’s even quieter, more survivable, and there’s no cpa on how much reactor electrical output can be used for ship service power.
